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Malaga – – September 22, 2026 -- Lightera confirmed its Multicore Fiber (MCF) technology is part of the OIF multi-vendor interoperability demonstration at ECOC 2026, running on stand 2126 in Malaga, Spain.

Lightera's MCF cuts fiber count by 75% versus conventional single-mode fiber

The company is supporting both a 500-meter and a 50-kilometer MCF demonstration using its 4-core, 125 μm clad diameter fiber, built with 40 μm pitch and ITU-T G.657.A2-compliant cores. According to Lightera, the design reduces fiber count by 75% compared to conventional single-mode fiber (SMF) and cuts weight and space requirements by up to four times.

West Chester, Pa. – September 22, 2026 -- Track Rabbit has launched a new feature allowing event organizers to run registration and member management through its platform while collecting payment via cash, Venmo, PayPal, a personal card reader, or any other method of their choosing.

Grassroots organizers gain full platform access without merchant processing setup

The feature targets informal automotive gatherings such as cars-and-coffee meetups, club cruise-ins, local track days, and car shows, where organizers often collect a cash gate fee or a Venmo request rather than running transactions through a formal payment processor. Riders and drivers still complete registration and manage their information through Track Rabbit; only the payment step moves outside the platform.

Mobile, Ala. – September 22, 2026 -- AltaPointe Health has completed a $15 million expansion at BayPointe Hospital, adding 34 adult psychiatric beds and raising total capacity from 104 to 138 beds, the organization announced at a ribbon-cutting ceremony held Monday.

Mobile County funded $6 million of the project through American Rescue Plan Act allocations

The Mobile County Commission contributed $6 million in federal pandemic-relief funding toward the $15 million total cost, according to AltaPointe Health. Commission President Connie Hudson and Commissioner Merceria Ludgood attended the ceremony alongside state lawmakers and AltaPointe board members.

San Ramon, Calif. – September 22, 2026 -- MediKarma, Inc. reported that its proprietary health score achieved a 90.6% correlation with actual claims costs within an 8 million-patient cohort, as the company positions its JackTM and JillTM AI infrastructure as the clinical backbone for direct-to-patient healthcare offerings.

MediKarma's health score correlates at 90.6% with real claims costs across a high-risk patient cohort

The company drew the 8 million-patient cohort from a de-identified population of 65 million patients, selecting individuals based on a minimum claims threshold and membership in the highest-cost disease categories. MediKarma says the correlation demonstrates the value of building patient engagement on an organized, longitudinal clinical picture spanning multiple providers rather than fragmented records.

Milwaukee – September 22, 2026 -- More than 90% of patients carrying a documented penicillin allergy in their electronic medical records can safely take the drug after clinical evaluation, according to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI), which is marking National Penicillin Allergy Day on September 28 with a push for wider adoption of allergy "de-labeling" protocols.

Inaccurate allergy labels block access to first-line infection treatment

Penicillin remains the most effective therapy for many bacterial infections, yet patients with unverified allergy labels are routinely steered toward alternative antibiotics. The AAAAI states that removing inaccurate labels through evaluation improves patient outcomes, lowers healthcare costs and supports efforts against antimicrobial resistance.

Sheridan, Wyoming – – September 22, 2026 -- The global lateral flow assay market is set to expand from $11.04 billion in 2026 to $16.37 billion by 2031, a compound annual growth rate of 8.2%, according to a new study by Wissen Research.

Trenton – September 22, 2026 -- New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill has signed bipartisan legislation (A5016/S4218) creating an Employee Ownership Transition Program and a revolving loan fund at the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) to finance conversions of businesses into employee-owned firms.

NJEDA revives a financing model that returned ninefold on its original loan

The new Employee Ownership Revolving Loan Fund reactivates a mechanism NJEDA first used 50 years ago to finance the employee buyout of the Okonite Company in Passaic County. That original loan was fully repaid and revolved nine times over; Okonite remains 100% employee-owned today and has distributed more than $300 million in ESOP payouts to workers. The fund can draw capital from state appropriations, federal sources including U.S. Economic Development Administration grants, and philanthropic capital.

Columbus, Ohio – September 22, 2026 -- Industrial robot installations have topped 500,000 units for four consecutive years, and MES Inc., a global manufacturing sourcing and supply chain partner to Fortune 500 OEMs, says structural aluminum components will now determine how fast robotics makers can move from prototypes to volume production.

Global robot installations hit 542,000 units in 2024, doubling the 2014 total

According to the International Federation of Robotics' World Robotics 2025 report, roughly 542,000 industrial robots were installed worldwide in 2024, more than twice the figure from a decade earlier. The global operating fleet reached about 4.66 million units in 2024, up 9% year-over-year, with annual installations holding above 500,000 units for four straight years.

Carrollton, Ga. – September 22, 2026 -- 121G has added AI Process Anomaly Monitoring to its 10Bridge data acquisition and interoperability platform, giving healthcare organizations automated detection of irregular file and data processing behavior before it disrupts operations.

New tool flags data deviations before they cause integration failures

The capability continuously monitors jobs processed through 10Bridge, automatically identifying transactions, files, or data that fall outside typical processing patterns. When an anomaly surfaces, the system alerts designated users so they can investigate and resolve issues preemptively, rather than after a failure disrupts downstream systems.

Washington – September 22, 2026 -- Internet2 has added Cisco AI PODs at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and Sacramento State to expand shared GPU capacity on the National Research Platform (NRP), a federally backed computing network supporting thousands of researchers nationwide.

New AI PODs let researchers burst into shared GPU capacity when local resources fall short

The Cisco AI PODs are pre-validated, full-stack infrastructure units built on Cisco Validated Designs, combining UCS servers and GPU nodes, Nexus networking, and Cisco Intersight management. Deployed as a single unit, they reduce the engineering and integration work institutions face when adding new GPU nodes to the NRP's distributed Kubernetes-based fabric, known as Nautilus.

Bozeman – – September 22, 2026 -- REAL Shows Network (RSN) has added Life Montana Style, a locally hosted 30-minute real estate and lifestyle series covering Bozeman, Montana, and the surrounding region, to its national television lineup.

Local real estate leader Laura Sacchi hosts new 30-minute series

The series is produced by RSN's Emmy-nominated, Telly Award-winning production team and hosted by local real estate leader Laura Sacchi. Each episode highlights notable neighborhoods and distinctive properties throughout the Bozeman area, celebrates local businesses, nonprofits and community organizations, and spotlights people and stories shaping everyday life in the region.

New York – September 22, 2026 -- Métaphores, the French textile Maison within Hermès' textile division, will launch its first U.S. designer-led showroom partnership on October 7, 2026, debuting a furniture textile capsule called Fragments at Lemieux et Cie in SoHo.

Métaphores enters U.S. furniture market through New York showroom deal

The collaboration marks Métaphores' first partnership with a U.S. designer-led showroom and the American debut of Fragments applied to furniture. The Maison, which draws on the century-old expertise of Verel de Belval in furnishing silks and Le Crin in handwoven horsehair, will place fabrics on sofas, accent chairs, benches, Pierre Jeanneret dining chairs, pillows and full-height drapery throughout the SoHo space.

Boston – September 22, 2026 -- Viva-Thera has nominated a preclinical candidate targeting the membrane-proximal external region (MPER) of HIV-1 gp41, completing discovery and optimization in seven months through a partnership with AI drug-design firm XtalPi (HKEX: 2228). The biotech, incubated and backed by XtalPi as a strategic shareholder, made its public debut disclosing progress across four HIV modalities: vaccines, long-acting small molecules, gene therapy and cell therapy.

XtalPi's AI screened 10 million compounds to isolate five validated hits

Using generative AI, XtalPi navigated a chemical space of approximately 10 million compounds to identify five hits with strong antiviral activity and favorable drug properties. Continuous optimization of these leads drove the program to preclinical candidate nomination within seven months, according to the companies.

Brookfield, Conn. – September 22, 2026 -- ROM Technologies Inc. (ROMTech) said its PortableConnect Rehab System can address two structural barriers facing Department of Veterans Affairs knee-replacement patients: distance from rehabilitation sites and fractured coordination between VA and Community Care providers.

Rural Veterans face outsized travel burdens for post-surgical rehabilitation

Approximately 3 million rural Veterans are enrolled in VA health care, and 54% are age 65 or older. A national VA knee-replacement study found 40.8% of patients lived in rural areas, making repeated long-distance travel a barrier to consistent rehabilitation. The VA's 2026 revised budget request includes roughly $2.29 billion for Beneficiary Travel, though the agency does not break out spending attributable to rehabilitation or rural Veterans specifically.

Elizabeth, N.J. – September 22, 2026 -- New Jersey fast-casual chain Salad House catered a free, full-day youth basketball camp in Elizabeth as part of a growing NIL partnership with local high school standout Jayden Johnson.

Salad House delivers signature wraps to fuel young athletes at Elizabeth camp

The brand supplied platters of its Buffalo Chicken Wrap and Crispy Mutha Clucka Wrap during a lunch break at the Fred Erxleben Recreation Center, feeding campers between morning and afternoon basketball sessions. The camp offered free skill development, competition, and mentorship for local boys and girls.

Charlotte, N.C. – September 22, 2026 -- A newly announced security agreement among the United States, Denmark and Greenland would give Washington veto power over sensitive investment on an island holding some of the largest undeveloped rare earth deposits in the Western world, intensifying a supply race already projected to push the global rare earth market from $3.95 billion in 2024 to $6.28 billion by 2030, according to Grand View Research.

Potsdam, N.Y. – September 22, 2026 -- Clarkson University has become one of only 14 institutions nationwide to earn the newly created Carnegie Elective Classification for Sustainability, following its participation in the 2025 pilot program that shaped the classification's framework.

Fourteen institutions defined the pilot cohort nationwide

Clarkson helped design the review process used to evaluate the classification, which assesses sustainability integration across research, education, community engagement and campus operations. The 14 pilot institutions will form the inaugural classified cohort, to be formally announced in June 2027, with the designation valid through 2033.

Pune – September 22, 2026 -- Bitwise has earned more than 130 Databricks Delivery Expert badges, securing recognition among the top partners in a credentialing program that launched in May 2026 to identify firms with deep migration and modernization expertise across the Databricks ecosystem.

Bitwise Certifications Surpass 330 Across Its Engineering Organization

The Chicago-headquartered engineering firm, which operates delivery centers in Pune, India, has accumulated over 330 Databricks certifications organization-wide. The company also holds Databricks Silver Partner status and was previously named a Databricks Genie GTM Partner for conversational, AI-powered enterprise data access.

Indianapolis – – September 22, 2026 -- CMIT Solutions marked its 30th year in business at CMIT Connect Live! 2026, a multi-day convention in Indianapolis that brought together franchise owners, technicians and technology partners from its national managed IT services and cybersecurity network.

Dayal Bhagat wins top franchise honor for growth across three regions

The Franchise of the Year Award, the event's highest honor, went to Dayal Bhagat, who operates CMIT Solutions locations serving Roanoke, Virginia, and North Charlotte and Statesville, North Carolina. The award recognized sustained business growth, service delivery and alignment with CMIT's core values. Other nominees included Matt McCracken, Mike Minkler, Tom Shirey, Cheryl Nelan and Evan Stein, and Marty and Leslie Wood.

Milan – September 22, 2026 -- Pirelli's Board of Directors has majority approved a roughly €1 billion ($1.2 billion) multi-year investment to expand its Rome, Georgia plant, with three board members -- Zhang Haitao, Xi Xiaohong and Wang Kun -- voting against the plan.

Rome, Georgia capacity to double to 6 million tyres by 2033

The expansion will lift annual production capacity at the Rome facility to approximately 6 million car tyres by 2033, including CyberTM Tyre technology, and is expected to create around 1,000 new jobs. The buildout begins in 2027 in two phases: a robotized production line using Pirelli's proprietary MIRS (Modular Integrated Robotized System) technology will scale from 2028 to 3 million tyres annually, while a separate fully automated conventional facility dedicated to premium products will add another 3 million tyres of capacity at full operation.